Quest for the Faradawn - страница 2

Just as the man stood up, a peal of bells suddenly filtered through the still air. It was the church in the village calling the people to Midnight Communion on Christmas Eve. To Brock it was a death knell. The Midnight Bells came once a year and two days later came the slaughter. The wood must be warned. He turned back to the strange picture under the oak and saw the two kneeling over the bundle. The one with long hair placed her head close to the uncovered space, lingered there a second or two and then moved away. Then they both got off their knees and for a moment held each other in a way Brock had not seen before in the Urkku. He felt a great sense of tenderness and sadness radiate from them and in his own blood he felt a tingling sense of excitement and anticipation as he watched them walk slowly away, arm in arm, leaving the bundle there, under the Great Oak.

He waited until he saw them go back through the stile and begin to cross the field and then he began, very slowly and cautiously, to inch his way across the log which was the only way of crossing the stream other than going all the way round by the stile. The log was slippery at the best of times, being covered with moss and constantly wet from the water, but now, with a layer of snow on top, it was treacherous. He should have gone the long way round but he had always been a hasty badger and he was now so curious to examine the strange bundle that it would have been impossible for him to delay a second longer. His enormous front claws gripped tight either side of the log as he inched his way very slowly over it. He could see the brackish water beneath him, jet black against the white of the two banks, and he could see the way the snowflakes dissolved and vanished almost as soon as they hit the surface. He was nearly at the far bank now. The flakes had almost stopped falling and a familiar silver light began to reflect back from the water. He clambered carefully off the log and felt the snow soft and yielding again beneath his paws. This part of the wood was full of bracken and the snow was thick, so he had to be careful not to walk on a mound and fall right through; it was no use following the rabbit tracks either as the rabbits were so light they could walk over the treacherous bumps. He made his way carefully towards the oak, sniffing the air as he went, and every few paces he would stop and listen. The wood was bathed in moonlight now and there wasn’t a sound; nothing was abroad tonight and even Brock began to feel cold on his back where the snow had made him wet and where it was now beginning to freeze on his fur. Finally he arrived within a pace or two of the noisy bundle and was able to look at it closely. What he saw astonished him; from the only part that had not been covered over he could see a small round pink face which, when it spotted Brock, broke into a wide smile. Happiness shone from its two little eyes and, despite its strangeness, Brock felt an overwhelming, impulsive surge of sympathy which overcame his caution and astonishment. He moved closer and put his nose against the baby’s cheek. The face grinned even more and began to emit the strange gurgling noises Brock had heard earlier. He had only once before seen a creature like this; two or three summers ago two Urkku had come into the wood carrying one and had sat down and eaten right next to the Old Beech. They had still been there when evening fell and he had watched them closely for some time from the shadows of the entrance to the sett. He had reasoned it out then that it had been a human baby, and this little creature lying under the oak was unmistakably the same.

‘Well, well,’ he muttered to himself. ‘This is odd. What am I going to do with you?’ He looked curiously at the little face. His first thought was that it had been left temporarily and that the two Urkku who had brought it would come back for it soon; he realized now that they must have been its parents. But it was too cold to leave a young thing out in the wood and there had been something strange in the way the two had parted from it; something very final and sad yet beautiful. Brock felt all this intuitively, for badgers are known throughout the animal kingdom as the most sensitive of creatures; it is this, coupled with their wisdom born of centuries of history, that gives them their special place.